Sunday, June 24, 2007

It seems that these days no relationship starts off clean. Particularly for us late twenty-somethings. We've all had a number of serious relationships, most often with people who we're still trying to be friends with or who are at least within the same friendship circle as us, and i betcha everybody can share an empathetic shudder at the mere mention of *that* breakup.

I've recently embarked on a most-inopportune romance; 6 weeks before leaving the country for god knows how long and with someone whose life is already complicated with love. It is a seriously unoriginal storyline, and one I've heard a million times before from people who have traveled themselves. You know the one: fell in love, couldn't stop thinking about them, spoiled the trip, should have packed more undies, Ibiza is overrated, blah blah BLAH.

So it's a well-used plot. So what? Just because I already knew the ending to King Kong didn't mean that I didn't enjoy the movie. Well, actually i didn't. But that's not the point. The point is that killing monkeys is wrong. Oh no, wait, the REAL point is that when it comes to love you sometimes just have to see things through to their conclusion. Even if that conclusion is hurtful awfulness wrapped in disaster pie. Actually, ESPECIALLY if it's that, because as Newton's second law states: all pie is good pie.

I was discussing this conundrum to my wonderful friend Katie Snowball at the party on Saturday (which RULED by the way - more stories to come later). I was all: isn't she wonderful, so glad you guys like her, isn't she hot and funny, what the hell are we doing ARE WE FUCKING LUNATICS kinda thing. In an effort to reassure me, she told me a story of what happened when her and Paulie got together.

Now first, I'm afraid we need a bit of 90210 background info.

* Katie's 'that breakup' was with a guy called Charlie. It happened a million years ago.* Charlie is someone we all love dearly, and is still around at all the big things* Paulie and Charlie have been best mates for ages (Buh-bowwww)* Paulie and Charlie are sweet now, most likely due to they're being built from radness 2000 awesalium alloy which as we all know is asshole-resistant. Still took an 8 hour conversation and loaaaads of booze, but then, most important things do.

So anyway, it's 3 weeks after the fateful first smooch and Katie's freaking the fuck out. She's in Europe, 8 hours due east of nowhere, alone, and wondering whether pursuing things with Pauly is the right thing to do. She decides to give the universe 24 hours to cough up something poignant - Either she will have a dream about him, get an email from him, or a 'P' shaped meteor will burst through the atmosphere making a 'paaaaaaaaaulieeeee' sound as it careens ground ward.

That night, no dream. No email the next day either. The following night, feeling quite glum and despondent, she meets a random Australian guy and they decide to have dinner together. It was nice, they get along well, and Katie bravely manages to avoid talking about her disintegrating love life. Dinner finishes, and random Australian guy has a bus to catch so makes his farewell; only to return 15 minutes later with a backpack and a quizzical look on his face.

Katie was dumbstruck. "Yes, umm.. shit.. Yes! How would you know that?"

"I knew Paulie when I lived in Canberra, you were in a few of the pictures he had hanging on his wall. I remember your face. He always said the most lovely things about you, and I got the impression he always had a secret sweet spot for you."

Sold, to the weird co-incidence dude who probably travels in an Arabian lamp. You just sealed a romance there buddy, nice job.

Not *quite* as cool as a meteor screaming 'Paaaaaaauuuulliiiiieee' that shoots out of the sky creating love heart shaped smoke rings as it plummets, but it will do in a pinch.

* transcribed (with hideous omissions I'm sure) for the beautiful science nerd of a girl that has crashed my life. It wasn't insured either, cheers.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

He totally ripped it from Mark Twain too, but hey; I've never said anything in my life worth quoting, except that time I pointed to my mouth and said "Food goes here". (Looking back now, totally wish I'd said Foot goes here. Hindsight - second worst form of sight.) Anyway, i guess that since he belted out a plethora of other pearlers during his time, I think we can let this one little indiscretion slide. You've been warned, Churchy.

Now that I've sneakily introduced the subject of Golf, I'd like to talk to you about my mate Ben who has just recently been sent to Kabul as part of his DFAT posting. Exact details on his role are a little vague as you might guess from a department of that nature, and God only knows how he got past their initial personality tests; he's got a cultural insensitivity record a mile long.

Fortunately for us, he's been sending back some incredible photos and anecdotes from the region. Below is one of his latest:

Oh don't laugh, I'm sure it's very nice. My question is this though:

If the fairways are made of sand, what are the sand traps made out of?

Suggestions:

Lava

Event Horizons

Effigies of Ray Martin

All completely unfathomable and scary, I'm sure you'll agree. My advice is to stick to the fairways.

ps: While we're talking about quotes, you really should check out the quotation site Think Exist. It's completely wonderful and gives you every appearance of being poignant when really you're just a Googling nobody. kinda. like. me. *sniff*

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Greetings Fish! And welcome to prison. My name is ARGH! COBRAS!, and I'll be your roomie for the next, oh, 8 years or so.

Oh. Um.. pleasure to be here i guess.

The pleasure is ours sir, i assure you.

Would it be rude for me to ask what you are in for?

Well, in a real-life jail context it would be considered the height of rudeness, and I'd probably have to shiv you. However, we live in a fabricated world that is the idle meanderings of a blog addicted web nerd. The likeness of me that you see on the left was screen captured from an early 90s PC game called 'Countdown' running on an software emulated x386 box*. You're that guy from 'some mothers do av em'.

So... we're cool?

As a cucumber.

Swell. So, what are you in for?

I am incarcerated presently due to an unfortunate incident that began amidst a lucid discussion regarding late fees and ended with me stabbing a librarian to death with a fork. I then ate her. With the same fork.

Oooo.. very nasty. Well done.

Thanks. You?

I erm... sold unpasteurized milk.

....

A fair bit of it actually.

....

Over many years.

Sooooo, do you wanna be my bitch now or later?

Later, if that's cool.

No dice. Fold my clothes, bitch.

* My Friday nights are getting weirder and weirder. You should have seen the convoluted process I had to go through to get this image. Marcus can testify. In my defence, we did go to a warehouse party afterwards. By my reckoning, the whole night can be looked upon as the social version of going carbon neutral.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Kids are an amazing source of wonder, there's no doubt about it. Not only is everything new and exciting, but when you're a kid you haven't had time to work out what not to say; which is why they always say the most awesome stuff. Like, "I do wee-wee's from here". Classic.

This weekend I've been spending some quality time with my family down in Canberra. My immediate family consists of my Mum, Dad, sister Claire, her husband Jeremy and their two boys Angus (9m) and Oliver (3yr). Jeremy likes them to be known by their AKAs: Goosey and Olay Beast. Since these are the raddest names ever, I'm going to refer to them as such from now on.

Mum was telling me a story over dinner about the last time that they were taking the boys home from Gymbaroo*. Lately they've come to realise that it's a really bad idea to let the boys sleep in the car ride home - it basically means that they'll be tearing the house up all afternoon (trick of the trade #476: letting kids recharge is asking for trouble).

Solution? Well, originally they tried belting out renditions of 'Old McDonald had a farm', but i guess the repetition factor of that tired old number wasn't keeping up with the demands of your new age, mass consuming 3 year old. Damn you Wiggles. When will people learn?

Anyway, mum made up this new thing where every 30 seconds or so she'd get super excited about something.

"TRUCK! Oh a truck. Did you see that truck? That certainly was a truck."

And I guess it kind of evolved into this thing were she starting saying it like a chicken.

"Oh a truck! Truuuuuuuuck. Truck Truck tck bck bck bck bUCKERRRk!"

The boys of course thought this was hilarious, and pronounced it so by erupting in peals of laughter every time mum started up her buckerk thing. Mum totally thought that Olay Beast was down with the gag too, until the other day he comes up to her and says:

"Hey chicken. Where's the truck?"

I don't know whether we should be really worried or calling NASA. Perhaps something he said to me over dinner tonight may help lead the way for us:

(confidentially leans over to me) "Hey. I'm going to go do poos, then I'm going to come back here and finish my dinner. Okay with you Davey?"

Dude, as long as you quit mentioning poos while I'm eating this here curry, you can do whatever you like little man. You have my blessing.

* some kid thing where they bang stuff to music and make all sorts of noise. The adult version is called ' a pub'.

I'm not sure if you've read the memo yet, but the town is abuzz with the news that we're throwing another party. It's a going-away party. MY going-away party. It's supposed to be a joint party since my flatmate Fish's parents rather annoyingly ill-timed his birth to coincide 27 years later with my party - but who really cares about that because haven't you heard, IIIIIiii'm going away.

Our last party was a soirée of gargantuan proportions. We themed it Russian, due to us having a surprising number of Russians within our circle at that time and because by god, didn't it sound badass to be necking vodka by the Cossack hat-full.

We cooked all kinds of Russian delicacies for the occasion. Incidentally, there are numerous dishes you can choose from when undertaking a Russian night; but for some reason they all contain shaved egg. Will, our resident dessert sergeant-at-arms pulled out all the stops and made a white Russian slice cut into little Tetris pieces. I'm sure you don't need reminding that Tetris was invented by a Russian, because like, that's just elementary stuff really. We met up in the afternoon to start the cooking, but even still it took Will most of the night to put this dally of a dessert together. He was so wasted on vodka by the end of it that he wiped out mid conversation, causing him to injure his coxis (arse bone). My biggest regret of the night was that I missed it - that and the incident where I abused a wall for not being perpendicular enough. Ah regrets. *sniff*

Anyway, like I was saying, we're having another one. This time the theme is 'English High Tea'. Just this afternoon I sent out a very clever text message invitation where I used lots of adequately themed phrases such as 'dear chaps' and 'ever so grateful' and poncy shit like that. You know, the REALLY funny stuff. When I told Monny two days ago what the theme was, she misheard me and sent out an invitation to a party where the theme was 'English I.T.'; so you know it's going to make for a pretty interesting night.

But here's the thing; because it's my see-you-later-thanks-for-all-the-fish going away party, there's no real way of avoiding incongruities in attendance. To put it another, significantly less nerdy way:

Ex-girlfriends are coming.

A few actually.

Bout 5.

..

But fear not dear reader, because like any other dull-witted group of males bent on their own survival, my mates and I have concocted a FOOLPROOF plan. It goes like this: We're going to tell them that the party starts an hour earlier than it actually does. When they arrive, I'll sit them all around in a circle, introduce everybody, point out the ones who had sex with me and the ones who didn't obviously because they had unreconciled self-esteem issues, and say:

"I got everyone together like this because I just didn't want anyone feeling unnecessarily uncomfortable. Nowwww discuss."

As I said, foolproof. It should be around this time that Will falls over again in the kitchen, thereby making the circle of hilarity complete.

Man, if only everything was this easy.

(Pre-emptive disclaimer to current lady l'armoire: You're looking very pretty today and i love you)

Thursday, June 7, 2007

It was only after watching this film that I picked up that the title actually means 'Paris, I love you'. I was under the impression it meant something else, the blame for which could be passed on to either my friend Boggo for being ill-informed or directly to me (way more likely) for being ill-attentive when she was attempting to explain it. In my defence, I was in Brisbane at the time and most likely flustered from the change in my meteorological environment or possibly because I'd just heard a loud noise or something. I also may or may not have been drunk. It would be wise at this time to ponder one of the timeless assertions of Oscar Wilde:

"Alcohol, if taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication."

Mm. Ponder. *assumes 'the thinker' position*

Yes, I think there's something in that for all of us.

Aaaanyway, the movie was great. 18 different stories of love (and life) in Paris, all done by different directors and with intertwining themes and story lines. My beautiful and engaging accomplice in this venture and I had many interesting post-movie discussions and were able TO RECALL EVERY SINGLE STORY EVEN THOUGH IN WAS FOUR IN THE MORNING WHEN WE MADE THE ATTEMPT AND HAD ONLY JUST BEEN PULLED OVER BY THE FUZZ. Took us a while but we did it. I was strictly there for the ride; she wasted me about 13-5.

Favourite quote:

(scene: aged man and woman. Soon to be divorced. Man has younger woman in the picture. Obviously tepid relationship. A single moment of fond discussion occurs regarding their elopement many years prior)

Man: "..and we would have gotten away with it too, had you been able to keep that beautifully sarcastic mouth or yours shut"

Woman: "Or if you'd been able to keep those impeccably tailored pants of yours, on"

Classic.

Oh yeh, I almost accidentally killed a skater last night by rear ending him in my car. It was wet and dark and we totally didn't see him flying down the road behind us. It made a sickening crash, but thankfully he was fine. I'm not sure, but I could have been even more stoked than him that nothing happened. What I am sure about is that we both simultaneously shat ourselves. Good times.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

On Saturday night I accidentally invited all of my friends home to my apartment after a great wedding. It was completely out of my control really; we'd had an absolute cracker of a time, the speeches we're unforgettable and I was drunk not only on booze, but on the love of friends I hadn't seen for a gazillion years. Mostly on booze though.

The way we like to get 'jiggy' at this time of night (couldn't reaaaally tell you, shall we say 3?) is to play guitars and sing our little lungs out. Group hugging optional. Songs of choice are currently:

* Zombie - Cranberries* Toxicity - System of a Down* More than words - Extreme* Babe I'm gonna leave you - Led Zeppelin* Hit me baby one more time - Britteny Spears (!)(change 'baby' to 'davey' for added effect)

... you can see where this is going, right? Anyway, not long after we starting torturing these songs with our fumigated lungs, I started receiving text messages from my previously-asleep-and-dreaming-of-people-not-playing-guitar roomie. He's not real good with noise, it's got to be said. A TV in the other room is enough for him to lose precious hours. At that time, we would have been the equivalent of about 20 TVs and a medium sized Bobcat Goldthwait. That's in decibels mind, personally I likened our sound to that of angels being squeezed.

I wasn't very understanding to his woes. My thoughts at the time were along the lines of "it's Saturday damnit" and "my best friends are here damnit" and "Ooo I wonder if there is any wine left in the fridge, damnit?".

The following night, he enters my room explaining that we 'have to' have a talk. I apologised profusely. I still didn't think I was *that* out of order, but couldn't be bothered having any antagonism during my last 3 weeks in Sydney.

Because I'm so thoughtful, I've decided to make it up to him with some presents. I'm confident he'll recognise the ironic humour in my gifts of:

Inbox Heists

Foodstinct is where brain meets braun - a foodie's guide on how to freestyle in the kitchen.

Passed out Guy, joining the ranks of moshzilla in the giffing hall of fame and easily the funniest thing I've read in months.

London street art gets even more inventive, with the appearance of the Decapitator. Old St, Shoreditch High Street.

Old codgers finally get a taste of the social networking action with the retiree aimed release of PensionBook.

Shasta Rae? Stryder Denver? Chastity, Blaize, Flower? Get the low down on whether those 'unique' baby names of yours are merely latent cruelty tactics in Baby's named a bad bad thing.

You know how you're always going on about wanting to
name a whale? Well bug me no more, as Greenpeace get all anthropomorphic on yo' ass. Before you vote, have a guess which name has already cornered 63% of the vote.

Batleb and Robin eat kebabs and battle the forces of evil as only they know how. Fancy someone having a crack at done-to-death wog humour and actually being funny.

Word of mouth is travelling fast about a new restaurant in London, and is quickly getting a reputation… for being awful: Devo. Definitely my next date location.

'Strap in, shut up, and hold on' recommends Johnny Virgil on his blog before unleashing the force - a flashback to a
JC Pennys Catalog from 1977. If this hasn't reached your inbox yet, your friends are working too much.

Cleverly invented super heroes of dubious repute duke it out in The
Superest.

Ever longed to see to lounges gettin' it on? Me neither, which is why this site is so confusing, and
prompted Will to pen this.

Pretending to Read

Hyperion (Dan Simmons) 30 Jan - As Johnny hastily defends, Hyperion is not Sci Fi - it's fashionably challenged literature. I had a rather embarrassing incident trying to explain it's premise to a rather cute med student who was 'lancing' my infected finger. In essence I came across as a science fiction nerd who does unclean things with his digits. Ah charm, I knew thee well. Anyway the book is good. If you can handle not impressing med students.

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 25 Dec - As Eleanor observed, the characters Marquez paints seem realer than reality. Elegant, magical insight, if a little distant and hard to lose yourself in. Now eager to attempt 100 Years of Solitude.

The Power of One (Bryce Courtney)28 Oct - Felt I needed to re-read one of my favourite books of all time. What hurt this time around is that Hymie annoyed me. May need to read Tandia now to get the feeling back.

Carter Beats the Devil (Glen David Gold)30 Sep - Quit. Accidentally read a review and realised I was reading what amounted to shit.

Such a Long Journey (Rohinton Mistry)
20 Oct - I preferred this one to 'A fine balance'. Brilliantly written and paced, he's an author that has taught me so much Indian culture, history, and family life.

31 Songs (Nick Horby)
5 Oct - One of my favourite authors. If you don't find some new music while reading this, then you're obviously listening to Brittany.

Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)
30 Sept - Flew through this. A great read from a great writer. Had me laughing loudly in the train and embarrassing myself. A birthday gift from May, who I thank for introducing me to Sedaris.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Richard P. Feynman)
15 Sept - Great. Feynman, despite being involved with the Manhattan Project, still comes across as being playful and wise. A Recommendation from my dear friend Frances, who I met in Edinburgh.

How to Get Rich (Felix Dennis)
06 Sept - Don't ask what I was thinking at the time, but actually a really really good read. Dennis is a poet, and he knows it.